Imogen Denny

Hallo D’Ancey Fans, It is with palpitations of tremulous delight that I announce the text of the book has been copy edited and returned to me! To draw back the wafting gauze curtain on the slowly moving forms tentatively coming together on this warm, still summer’s night - during the run of my show Twist at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August of 2023, and for the month afterwards in an airbnb in Italy (surprisingly less glamorous than it sounds), I wrote like a maniac (in deep spiritual interdimensional consultation with D’Ancey LaGuarde the whole time, obviously), and handed in my manuscript at the end of September, then moved to Queensland and had a baby. Obviously, narratively speaking, that could be Game Over because obviously I could be living happily ever after, which in Romance Novels is like death but more so. (According to the norms of romance, babies mainly appear in epilogues, and one spends one’s time cooing uneventfully.) But I refuse to let the story end, and now with a one-month-old baby and a toddler, I’m entering the pool of New Romance possibilities: from Mafia Don’s Surprise Baby, to Heartwarming Christmas Family Story; to Shirtless Veteran Does Chores for Put-Upon-Hard-Working-Yet-Somehow-Still-Very-Sexy Mother; to Wait Sixteen Years for the Romance Tales of My Children in Which I will Appear to Give Advice. Also for those of you wondering what happens now with the book, the copy editor has sent back notes to my editor-editor (did you know those were two different people? I didn’t! They are!), and so now I will get to read through and decide whether to accept the notes or double down on my initial bad instincts and worse choices. Exciting times, and I’m looking forward to keeping you in the loop with extremely graphic descriptions of the ongoing book-making process as we move closer and closer, knowing it’s a mistake but unable to resist the moment where our lips (your hands) will touch (the book). Alice (and D’Ancey)

Update

Magnificent pre-purchasers of The D’Ancey LaGuarde Reader, I come bearing my heart in my hands and also an update! First, big news – I’m in the early middle of passionately wrestling my way through the process of artwork for the book. Deciding on what art ought to be in it and how sweaty I’m allowed to demand the art director make it look is a new and fascinating process. More! Bigger News! I have responded to the kind notes of the copy editor with clarifications where requested, and the whole process is filling me with delight. For example, one response I found my fingers typing was: 'it has to be "with a crocodile" rather than by, because the crocodile is merely the murder weapon. The evil Viscount is the murderer.' Sometimes I am astonished that anyone has allowed me to do this, let alone all of you incredible people actively encouraging me in it. Also in this update, some Biggest News! Because we’ll be trying to sell the book to people who aren’t already D’Ancey LaGuarde fans; to reach people who may never have even heard of D’Ancey, we will be changing the name of the book in order to lure in the regular human who might enjoy it but be put off by the title. (Though I for one would happily buy a book with a title that included the name of someone I’d never heard of, couldn’t effectively Google and who according to reality 'doesn’t technically exist', I understand there are some people who wouldn’t.) The new title is: A Passion For Passion: The Greatest Romance Novels Never Written Also, for those who are interested in writing with me, I run weekly writers meetings on Zoom, and I’ll be running a writers' retreat in Switzerland in September. Check over on my Patreon for the details of those things. With heaving breasts and a spleen full of joy, I bid you farewell til my next update! Xx Alice (with approval of D’Ancey LaGuarde)

An update on The D'Ancey LaGuarde Reader

Hallo dear readers-to-be! You might have discovered, in what I assume is your constant checking and rechecking of this web page, that we have updated the name of the D’Ancey LaGuarde Reader! Yes indeed, as we progress with the internal art, the completion of the copy edit, and a formal request for more scenes of meaningful plot-based fingering on horseback, we have decided that we would like people to judge the book by its new cover. We have decided on A Passion for Passion: A Delirious Love Letter to Romance, because we think it sums up the flavour of the book, (which some have described as 'Terry Pratchett via Bridgerton', and others have described as 'Like nothing I’ve read before, not necessarily in a bad way'). In addition, we didn’t believe people in bookshops would intuitively reach for the other suggested title, which was 'Sticky Yearning: A Throbbingly Intellectual Tour Through Many Mountainous Breasts (Bring Your Skis)'. Also, apparently Bear Grylls has dibs on that title for his next memoir. So raise your chased goblets and drink a mouthful of toast to A Passion for Passion! With Yearning, Alice Fraser and D’Ancey LaGuarde

A Name by Any Other Name

She sat before her mirror, gazing thoughtfully at the familiar face. Not the kind of face men adored, she thought, poking at her full lips, and impatiently brushing back her magnificent auburn mane. Just a regular face, nothing special. Her eyebrows were too dark for beauty, and her nose was slightly too straight… and those violet eyes for which she’d been bullied at school were the bane of her existence. She sighed, creamy bosom heaving, if only she were the glamorous dark-haired flat-chested figure that fashion demanded, instead of this juicy-bosomed, tight-waisted yawnfest… Oh sorry! I didn’t notice you there reading! I was just thinking about how far we’ve come with the book. All the writing’s done, though I keep thinking of extra bits I could just…(!!!!). We’re now in the middle of putting together the illustrations for the book. That’s a mixture of the excellent in-house Unbound art director putting together cover designs to my deranged briefs: 'Can we have a cow benevolently looking over Lord Pranceling’s shoulder… yes, but more floating in the air sort of like Mufasa in The Lion King?', 'More tentacles!'; independent artist Rosie Mullender putting together the double-page spread of The Lost Duke to my deranged brief: 'Can the young footman on the left holding the tray look like he’s secretly a young heiress in disguise and also falling in love with that handsome lord holding a pistol?'; me discovering that it is impossible to explain some of the ideas I have, and taking it into my own clumsy hands to draw, for example, Sebastian, who is half leopard, half underwear model, and all hunk. Or a werewolf highlander who is in love with a samurai vampire. Anyway, it’s all exciting and Unbound had me give a little talk to their people about romance and comedy and the respectability of genre fiction, and in return I’m learning all about their arcane lore: lead times for sell-in, printing, production, editorial and so on. It’s fascinating to see behind the curtain of how a book gets made. Turns out it’s not as simple as you write a book, give it to your editor and then … a book appears, which TBH is probably what I thought when I hadn’t thought about it very much. It’s been really nice to learn about the ‘backstage’ of publishing, if that’s what it’s called (it isn’t) so I can bring even more good info to my Patreon writers group, and to keep pushing the envelope by trying to find the outer limits of what’s too silly an idea to publish.

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Update

An update on The D'Ancey LaGuarde Reader

A Name by Any Other Name

We’re now in the middle of putting together the illustrations...

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